Glossary

ABCD schema: a comprehensive set of data type definitions developed to support the sharing and integration of "primary biodiversity data"; i.e. data about the occurence of organisms in nature or in scientific collections (observation and specimen records).

Blog: a website or online environment reserved for posting comments on a designated topic. Unlike a wiki, a blog presents every participant's personality and opinion as opposed to encouraging consensus.

Charter: a formal document required for all TDWG groups that describes their remit and core membership.

Compliance Testing: testing to determine whether a system meets some specified standard.

Consensus: implies an agreed collective opinion even though variations of opinion are present. Consensus rather than voting is TDWG's method for standards development. Conveners must therefore have a thorough understanding of consensus and how to achieve it (link to consensus document).

Darwin Core: a simple set of data type definitions developed to support the sharing and integration of "primary biodiversity data" (e.g. data about the occurrence of organisms in nature or in scientific collections).

GIG (Geospatial Interest Group): TDWG interest group that examines geospatial standards and to makes recommendations for their use in biological information systems. The GIG is also in a position to advise geospatial standards groups on bioinformatics.

Governance: How something is governed or managed. In TDWG theExecutive Committee holds the responsibility of leading and managing TDWG. Conveners hold management responsibilities for Interest Groups and their Task Groups.

HTML: Hypertext Markup Language. a subset of Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), used for authoring pages for the World Wide Web.

IAPT (International Association for Plant Taxonomy): an association founded in 1950 to implement projects of interest and concerns to systematic biologists. Current work includes the extent, recognition, organization, evolution, and naming of plants and fungi, both living and fossil.

Intellectual Property (IP): a term describing legal entitlements to certain types of information, ideas or other intangibles.

IPR (Intellectual Property Rights): intellectually property entitlements that either grant exclusive rights on exact replications of an item or copyright OR grant rights preventing others from producing the same design.

Interest Group: A TDWG group that discusses problems, goals, strategies, methods and applications of technologies related to the biodiversity information exchange. Interest Groups are the only entity in TDWG that can form a Task Group.

Observation Data: data concerning the measurement of occurrences or absences of organisms at a certain place and time. The act of measurement implies that a methodology (known or unknown) has been followed and this methodology may include the collection of specimens.

OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium): an international group of companies, government agencies and universities and individuals working to develop interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT.

Proceedings of TDWG: the annual publication of all abstracts from presentations at annual TDWG conferences (uses OJS).

Protocol: an agreed format for transmitting data between two or more devices.

RDF (Resource Description Framework): is a general-purpose language for representing and exchanging information on the Internet. Specifically, RDF offers a platform for biologists to combine heterogeneous data from distributed data sources, add value to that data, and then publish it back to the community.

RDFS (RDF Schema): RDF’s vocabulary description language used to provide mechanisms for describing groups of related resources and the relationships between these resources.

Review Manager: the person responsible for managing the review of a proposed TDWG standard or charter.

RFC (Request for Comment): a series of documents outlining new research, innovations, and methodologies applicable to an Internet technology.

Sandbox: a web environment used for raising ideas or for testing protocols, software or processes.

Schema Repository: an area of the TDWG on-line collaboration environment set aside for subgroups to store documents that are accessed (frequently) by software (e.g. RDF schemas, XML schemas).

SPM:The Species Profile Model is a specification of data concepts and structure intended to support the retrieval and integration of data that documents species, e.g., facts about biology, ecology, evolution, behaviour, etc.

TAPIR (TWDG Access Protocol for Information Retrieval): a standard that combines and extends the features of the BioCASe (see BioCASe) and DiGIR (see DiGIR) protocols to create a new and more generic way to communicate between client applications and data providers via the internet.

Task Group: a TDWG group formed by an Interest Group to develop a specific product within a specific time frame.

Taxon Concept: A taxon name AND description required to differentiate it from other instances that may fall under the same taxon name.

TDWG (Taxonomic Database Working Group): a non-profit, scientific and educational association formed to develop international standards and protocols for sharing biodiversity information.. TDWG is now referred to as ‘Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG).

TNC (Taxonomic Names and Concept Group): a TDWG interest group that promotes the understanding of taxonomic names and their relation to described taxon concepts. The group focuses on the development and use of standard data models for representing taxon names and concepts (see Taxon Concept) and how these standards relate to other biodiversity information models.

Typo3: The content management system used to manage TDWG website content.

UBIF (Unified Biosciences Information Framework): an XML schema for biological data exchange and integration across networks. Specifically, this schema tried to define a common foundation for several TDWG/GBIF standards like SDD, ABCD or TaxonConceptNames

URL (Uniform Resource Locator): the address of a resource on the Internet.

W3C (World Wide Web Consortium): an international association where member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term Web growth.

Wiki: a website that allows end users to easily add, remove, and edit some available content. In TDWG, the wiki is used to collaboratively develop documents and foster discussion for subgroups.

XDF: an early attempt to define a language for the definition and exchange of specimen records, that was accepted as a TDWG standard in 19**.

XHTML (Extensible HyperText Markup Language): a language for content that is accepted by XML and HTML. This format is used by TDWG for formal documentation specifications.